A Vanderbilt University Medical Center study released today shows there is no evidence that the risk of suicide differs with two commonly prescribed antidepressants prescribed to children and adolescents.
The population-based study, published today in the journal Pediatrics, tracked children and adolescents who recently began taking selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs).
For the past decade parents and health care professionals have worried that children and adolescents treated with antidepressant medications might be at increased risk of suicidal thoughts or behavior.
In 2004 The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the UK Medicine Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency issued public warnings about the increased risk of suicidal thoughts or behavior in children and adolescents treated with certain antidepressant medications, and required that a boxed "black box" warning be added to package inserts for antidepressants.
Because antidepressants differ in their characteristics, including effects on neurotransmitters, it has also been believed that the risk of suicidal behavior for individual medications might differ.
"It is important to study this group of children and adolescents because many children are treated with these medications in the U.S. each year and we need to understand the differential risks for suicide attempts and completed suicides," said study author William Cooper, M.D., MPH, Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor of Pediatrics and professor of Health Policy.
SSRIs, like fluoxetine, are the most widely used antidepressants/antianxiety drugs, slowing down the rate at which serotonin, an important signaling molecule in the brain, is broken down. An SNRI, like sertraline, is a newer type of antidepressant that does the same thing for another important chemical, noradrenaline, as well as serotonin.
